Amazon Kindle iOS app adds dictionary, Wikipedia, Google support

As much as I love the feel of holding a good book in my hand, there are a few things you can do with digital books that you can’t easily do with the old fashioned paper type of book. For instance, you can quickly search for text in the eBook, or highlight a word to look up its meaning in a dictionary. You know, assuming your eBook software lets you do that — which the Amazon Kindle app for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad now does.

Here’s how it works, just fire up Amazon Kindle 2.2 on your iDevice and open a book. then press and hold any word, and a menu will pop up asking if you want to add a note or highlight the text. You should also see a definition of the word from the Oxford American Dictionary.

You can also click the Google or Wikipedia buttons to search for the word on one of those sites using the web browser. Or you can click the Full Definition button to see a more complete entry for the word from the Oxford dictionary, which has about 250,000 entries.

When you install the Kindle 2.2 app, it will automatically download the dictionary, which you can also open as a standalone eBook if you’re the sort of person who likes to read through dictionaries cover to cover in your free time.

The new app also adds the ability for searching inside of books on the iPad.